REGION: Escondido, SM exploring partial firefighting merger

But discussions very preliminary, leaders say

A new training partnership between fire departments in Escondido
and San Marcos could lead to further consolidation and eventually
some sort of partial merger, officials from the two cities said
last week.

The goal would be saving money for taxpayers by eliminating
redundancies in administration, standardizing employee training and
creating better leverage for equipment purchases by the two
departments, officials said. Unifying dispatch centers could also
reduce response times, they said.

Similarly, fire agencies serving Oceanside, Carlsbad, Vista and
the Fallbrook area hired a consultant last month to study the
potential benefits of consolidating some of their operations.

Officials from Escondido and San Marcos said there was virtually
no chance that a partial merger would reduce either the number of
firefighters or the number of fire stations in the two cities.

Escondido has seven stations and 85 firefighters to serve a
population of 144,000, while San Marcos has four stations and 56
firefighters to serve 84,000 residents.

Firefighters from the two departments already cross into the
opposite city to fight fires and respond to other emergencies under
a longtime "mutual aid" agreement, and a consolidation would not
affect that, officials said.

But there could eventually be fewer chiefs, consolidation of
fire safety inspections and unification of dispatch centers,
officials said.

"In any kind of merger, the big savings is in the administration
costs by getting rid of the redundancies," said San Marcos fire
Chief Todd Newman. "There are definitely things we can look at down
the road."

But Newman stressed that no formal discussion of significant
consolidation had taken place, and that the two cities had only
agreed to combine their emergency medicine training programs so
far.

"This is a first step of us working together," he said. "We
haven't had specific discussions, but this could open the door to
other things."

Newman's counterpart in Escondido, Chief Mike Lowry, agreed.

Lowry said the two departments had "fairly thin" administrative
staffs, but that some savings were possible.

But he reiterated Newman's point that nothing was imminent.

"Significant consolidation is not happening tomorrow," he
said.

Newman and Lowry said other things making a partial merger
feasible were that the two departments have similar "cultures," and
that they share a long and jagged border. Merging with any other
department would not make sense for either city geographically,
they said.

Mike Diaz, president of the Escondido firefighters union, said a
crucial benefit of partially merging would be more efficient
dispatch of firefighters to emergencies.

"Having different dispatch centers forces us to make an extra
call for mutual aid or automatic aid," said Diaz. "I think
everybody thinks it could be a good thing to consolidate or
regionalize."

But Diaz questioned whether combining the emergency medicine
training was really a precursor to some sort of merger, or just a
way to camouflage a shortage of those workers since Escondido laid
off 10 emergency medical technicians in 2009.

"All they're doing is moving the pieces around," said Diaz,
contending that having Escondido firefighters train in San Marcos
prevents them from being pulled out of required training sessions
in Escondido to respond to emergencies. "They're just stretching to
meet state and federal training standards."